114 ^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



in the present ; liis creation of species with his creation of indi- 

 viduals. According to special creation, forms of life are pro- 

 duced by the will of God ; having, indeed, the minutest analogies 

 to one another, and yet having no relation to one another. Ac- 

 cording to evolution, species are not merely created by God, but 

 created by him according to a method which relates each species 

 with the rest, and explains their analogies, like family likenesses, 

 by a common ancestry. 



We have purposely stated this in the language of religion, as 

 Mr. Darwin not unfrequently does. But it is a purely scientific 

 question ; and Mr. Darwin, we think rightly, afterward expressed 

 his regret at having used " the Pentateuchal term of creation," * 

 because of creation, in its strict sense, as ultimate origin, science 

 knows and can know nothing. The question thus becomes one 

 between those who hold and those who deny the immutability of 

 species. The last are commonly spoken of as " Transmutation- 

 ists " ; the former might have been nicknamed " Immutables," 

 but unfortunately they were too often called " Creationists," and 

 the scientific issue was obscured for both parties by theological 

 animus. Hence a belief in God as Creator came to be associated 

 with the denial of transmutation, and a theory of transmutation 

 was supposed to imply a rejection of the Christian creed. 



It is really time that the doctrine of " special creations," which 

 some theologians cling to so tenaciously, was held up to the 

 light. Where did it come from ? Who invented it ? Every- 

 body will at once say, " The schoolmen," because nobody reads 

 the schoolmen, and people have a vague notion that " genus " 

 and " species " are as much a monopoly of the schoolmen as are 

 " entity " and " quiddity." But the schoolmen were transmu- 

 tationists! They didn't believe in fixity of species any more 

 than they believed in the uniformity of nature. For them the 

 transmutation of plants was as possible as the transmutation of 

 metals. The " reign of law," which is a commonplace with us, 

 was unknown even in the days of Bacon. It is hardly credible 

 to us that Lord Bacon, the father of modern science, as he is 

 called, though he was only a schoolman touched with empiri- 

 cism, believed not only that one species might pass into another, 

 but that it was a matter of chance what the transmutation would 

 be. Sometimes the mediaeval notion of vivification from putre- 

 faction is appealed to, as where he explains the reason why oak- 

 boughs put into the earth send forth wild vines, " which, if it be 

 true (no doubt)," he says,f " it is not the oak that turneth into a 

 vine, but the oak bough, putrefying, qualifyeth the earth to put 

 forth a vine of itself." Sometimes he suggests a reason which 

 implies a kind of law, as when he thinks that the stump of a 



* " Life and Letters," ii, p. 203. f " Natural History," Cent, vi, p. 522. 



